Tuesday Open Thread
I normally wouldn't put up a product but there are some free copies for educators (and it was created by UW's Computer Science and Engineering department and it's STEM-based). It's a computer security card game called "Control-Alt-Hack" that sounds fun and interesting (for kids 14 and up). There's a link to a page for educators at the link provided.
Also, I note a bit of name-calling creeping in here. Please consider your words and speak to ideas/statements and not to people. We can disagree but without calling each other names.
Also, I mentioned this way back but as a reminder:
Join with other parents to learn about education funding and the upcoming School Levy. Do you know who makes the decisions on the state level? What is the McCleary Decision? Why do schools have to do so much fundraising? Why do we need Levies? Come learn about the bigger funding picture.
What's on your mind?
Also, I note a bit of name-calling creeping in here. Please consider your words and speak to ideas/statements and not to people. We can disagree but without calling each other names.
Also, I mentioned this way back but as a reminder:
Join with other parents to learn about education funding and the upcoming School Levy. Do you know who makes the decisions on the state level? What is the McCleary Decision? Why do schools have to do so much fundraising? Why do we need Levies? Come learn about the bigger funding picture.
Speakers
include: Senator Jeanne-Kohl-Wells; Michael Debell, School Board;
Lisa
MacFarlane founder of Schools First (Levy Campaign), and Kerry
Cooley-Stroum of
Schools First. We’ll end with a question and answer
session.
Details:
Thursday, December 6 from 7-8:30 pm at Coe Elementary in the Gym -
2424 7th Avenue West (7th Avenue West and West Wheeler)
Also, for those of you who enjoy holiday programming on television, a listing of all the upcoming shows (Grinch, Charlie Brown, It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Sting concert, etc.)
Also, for those of you who enjoy holiday programming on television, a listing of all the upcoming shows (Grinch, Charlie Brown, It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Sting concert, etc.)
What's on your mind?
Comments
- Creative Options
Options Schools are open to all but do have a geographic zone preference for students whose closest school IS an Option school.
Creative Approach is a new method for ANY school - Option or Attendance - to make changes, big and small at their school. It could be length of day, theme, etc.
You have to have 80% of teachers at a school say yes to a CA approach. There is no real buy-in from parents (yes, yes, allegedly parents have some sort of input and there needs to be some kind of evidence that parents want it) but parents get no vote and there are no parents on the committee that makes the decisions.
Also, since the CA plan can be used at any school, it is an interesting thing for parents who now mostly HAVE to send their child to a school whose approach could be radically different from most attendance schools.
I would love to see parents involved as much as possible in these processes. I hope that we see more innovation but really, more cohesive school communities because of their CA plans.
Most of all, I hope they show we don't need charters and their upheaval.
HERE
It is a somewhat bizzarre look at where some folks want WA DC schools to be headed.
Charters schools and the others ... it is NOT a vision I find comforting. BIG DISRUPTION IS GOOD FOR URBAN SCHOOL DISTRICTS. (not in my view)
-- Dan Dempsey
-sps parent
LEV Nation,
Registration is now open for out third annual Activist Training: Access, Equity and Excellence!
Workshops include:
- Show Me the Money! Funding WA’s Schools
- The Three D's: Discipline, Data Collection and Disproportionality
- Why All Day-Kindergarten Really Matters
- Leveraging our Parent Power in the Collective Bargaining Process
- The Ins and Outs of Teacher Evaluations in Washington
- Community Strategies for Closing the Opportunity Gap
- Learning from the rest of the Nation: How to Do Charters Right
When: 9a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, January 12th
Where: Highline Community College - The Student Union (Building 8)
Cost: $25. (Fee waived upon request)
Sign up using this link: https://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5892/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=172138
Hope to see you there!
Common Core vs. Common Sense
"By compelling schools, teachers, and students to meet standards they are not equipped to meet, we are likely to do serious harm to millions of young people and the larger society."
===============
I see CCSS as the latest ill designed boondoggle. CCSS have not been field tested over time. Yet $500 million and lots more will be aimed at making CCSS work.
John Hattie in "Visible Learning" and "Visible Learning for Teachers" intelligently applies relevant data to show how to improve instruction and well as turn around schools. Instead of designing around the intelligent application of relevant data .... CCSS is being purchased... and teachers will have yet another hurried ill designed (likely half-baked) path to follow.
No Vendor or Consultant will be left behind.
From Hattie's analysis....
Learning effect sizes
Whole Language 0.06
Phonics 0.60
Yet whole language was in vogue for 20+ years in many places. .... CCSS is an untested unproven plan, which hardly makes it an improvement (unless we are talking about Pearson Publishing's bottom line).
U.S. teachers have by comparison with top achieving countries by far the least teacher preparation time weekly..... so how is that being addressed?
Yet again more ill designed mandates that ignore reality.
-- Dan Dempsey
Gentleman Greer being his usual self to KSB
She did NOT say that! OMG!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50095625/ns/local_news-seattle_wa/
-StepJ
As much as I was happy when MGJ left town, I am sorry to hear of her premature passing.
-StepJ
My child's school is still using Whole Language Tradebooks from the 90s to teach reading. They call it balanced literacy (even though it's clearly not). There is no phonemic awareness or phonics curriculum at the school, and it's been 15 years since the science came down hard against these patterned, predictable tradebooks, yet Seattle marches on using them.
Stunned
-reader